Advocacy

Call to action: PACIE needs your help!

After much hard work and collaboration with PA legislators, PACIE announced that PA Senators Eichelberger and Dinniman agreed to sponsor legislation to establish a Global Education Task Force. If signed into law, this task force will work to advance international education initiatives across the Commonwealth.

Members of the House Education Committee are meeting on May 22, 2018. We urge you to contact your legislators immediately to request that they consider Senate Resolution #228, creation of a Global Education Taskforce at the upcoming meeting on Tuesday May 22, 2018 and move it to the floor for a full house vote.

Here is some language that PACIE's suggests when contacting your legislators, but please customize to make it in your own voice:

"I represent the Pennsylvania Council for International Education, one of the primary partners on a resolution to establish a taskforce on global education in the commonwealth. We have learned that the Education Committee will be meeting on May 22. Although we realize that there is significant business to attend to, we would appreciate it if Resolution 228 is discussed and forwarded to the full House for a vote. As you will see, 228 passed in the Senate in December by a margin of 50-0, and we are hopeful to get the work underway before the end of this calendar year. Our organization represents all members of the education communities in K-12 and higher education. Members of our organization will continue to call throughout the upcoming week to ensure that you understand how important this Resolution is to the education community in the Commonwealth."

In order to pass this legislation, PACIE requests that you contact your PA legislators before May 22 and urge them to support this important bill!

You are an invaluable part of PACIE's work, and PACIE thanks you in advance for your timely response to this call to action! Questions may be directed to PACIE President, Nikki Pumphrey, at nicole@welcomingcenter.org.

PACIE executive leadership, board, and members are our best advocates and actively promote the mission and goals of PACIE and the value of global ready graduates.

PACIE has rededicated itself to advocacy as it pertains to global education from kindergarten to graduate school in the Commonwealth. It has striven through a variety of pursuits to broaden a conversation that was at one point conducted by primarily by international education into one that happens within each household in Pennsylvania. PACIE began these pursuits by engaging with the former Secretary of Education, Carolyn Dumaresq. Through Secretary Dumaresq, we were introduced to an education consultant with whom we work to network in Harrisburg with a wide variety of officials from the Department of Education as well as Capitol Hill.

As of September 2016, members of PACIE have met with more than twenty State Senators and House of Representatives, have worked to regain the naming of the Governor School for Global and International Education, and preserve an excellent relationship with the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Education. Through these relationships, new legislation is currently underway which would reengage the state in a conversation on what global learning can and should look like for today’s students. PACIE hopes and will continue to advocate for the completion and implementation of this legislation. It further hopes to be a guiding force in the ensuing conversation that would frame Pennsylvania’s expectations for global education within its schools and universities.